


Never Smile...

by Eilinelithil



Series: Thoughts On A Happy Ending [4]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 01:00:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14630733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eilinelithil/pseuds/Eilinelithil
Summary: Belle reflects on everything – to whom the reflection is addressed remains unspoken. Focus is Season 2 Episode 4, but references events from the life of the series to date - this story is the fourth in what will probably be a long series.





	Never Smile...

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don’t own them – if I did I’d treat them a whole hell of a lot better than ABC did.

A part of me thinks I knew I was dreaming; knew that my subconscious was giving me some kind of message. Most people hearing this – people like my father – would tell me it was a warning. They would tell me that I should have listened and that would have prevented years of trouble and pain and heartbreak. Now, many, many years along this road, I know differently. I have finally heard, and understand, the message of my subconscious in a way that I wish I had then. _That_ would have avoided all those things that were the bumps along our road – the thorns on the stem of our perfect rose.

Ironically, I think, the only person who _wouldn’t_ have insisted the dream was a warning; who might have understood the truth of it, is David. Of all the people in Storybrooke, I believe he was the most understanding, the most supportive of the love that Rumple and I have for each other.  I see that now, though I missed it in the things he once said to me, like, “How’s married life treating you?” and other such light queries, and of course knowing that – however unwillingly – Rumple turned to him for advice from time to time…

The dream began pleasantly enough. I was with Rumple in his shop, and from a case between us he took out a large box in which was the most exquisite necklace. He held it up to me, indicating I should turn around as I told him it was very beautiful and asked him the reason for giving the gift; the occasion. It was a large teardrop made up of many little diamonds set in silver, and ascending the chain on which it was hung, were many more little diamonds, similarly set.  It was a gift far in excess of anything I deserved.

“The occasion,” Rumple answered, settling the neckless around my neck and fastening it as I held up my hair, “is us. We haven’t really gotten out much since Storybrooke awakened. So, I thought we should see it… together.”

I turned to face him, smiling, and reached out to caress his face as his eyes took in the sight of the neckless against my skin, and he ‘wowed’ softly.

I kissed him lightly, held him tightly and melted into his arms as they came around me to hold me too.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” he teased, “the nightlife is extremely limited.”

I laughed as we half swung back and forth in each other’s arms.

“No,” I said, pulling away to look at him. “That’s not what I meant. Thank you for… for what you’re doing; for how you’re changing.”

I smiled again, my sentiment sincere, my emotions true and full of love for him. The love I’ve always had, but which then I didn’t fully understand.  It would be a long road yet to walk to reach that understanding, and one that would be castigated by so many as ‘toxic’ or worse… but worse still was that even _I_ believed, at one point or another that they might have been right, even though the love was stronger than any doubt that I came to fear.

The bell rang as the door opened.

I came – through the years – to despise that bell; Despise it or deride it, sometimes both, because it always heralded _some_ kind of disruption.

“Okay ‘Stiltskin.” It was Leroy. “I want my axe.”

I had turned at the sound of the bell, already distaste was written over my face.

“I’m sorry,” Rumple said calmly, though with each word his voice became harder, “but we’re closed.”

“It’s mine,” Leroy said, coming closer, and I began to back away, fearful of where this exchange might lead. “Give it to me.”

“And yet… still closed.”

“Just because you possess something, don’t mean it’s yours.” Rumple’s expression began to darken as Leroy continued to speak. “Nothing in this shop _belongs_ to you.”

Then Leroy turned on me, sneering, full of contempt.

“And you,” he said, “How can you be with such a monster? Or maybe you’re just another possession too.”

“How… _dare_ you!” Rumple exploded. Taking Leroy by the lapels of his shirt and pushing him away from me. He was always quickest to anger when any insult was brought to bear against me. “You want your axe? Fine…”

“Rumplestiltskin!” I called out, trying to stop him, but I wasn’t heard.  He was already too far gone inside of his anger to hear me.

“You can have it. Buried. In. Your. Chest!” And all the while his hands were around Leroy’s throat, choking him.

“Stop!” I cried. “Stop! This isn’t you any more.”

That’s when the real change occurred, Rumple’s manner, his voice, his being switched from Mr. Gold – that he had become in the new land in which we now lived – to Rumplestiltskin, from the Enchanted Forest.

“Oh, it’s me, Dearie!” He turned his head and I saw even his appearance was as before, my shock, my dismay finding expression on my face. “Always has been. Always will be.”

…And I woke.

My heart was pounding, my breath fluttering in and out of my body, and I turned my head to find the pillow, still indented with the shape of Rumple’s head, was empty, as was the bed beside me. Oh… you didn’t realize that even then, so soon after our reunion that was a part of our reality? Why would it not have been? So many years wasted, so many regrets from before, all were soothed by those first few hours, our first few days and nights, where we discovered our love and the pleasures we could bring each to the other.

In him, _with_ him, I found my liberation, my _self_ and my pleasure. With Rumple I learned that my body was not a thing to be possessed, but a gift to be bestowed and enjoyed. Rumple was my first… my only and my last. He is my always and eternal, in _all_ aspects of our love.

So, finding him missing, and as I padded through the house and out into the yard to peer in through the basement window only to find him spinning and working magic… not understanding why or what he was about, I felt a sharp sense of betrayal and loss that – coupled with the dream – pushed me to the first of many departures from my journey with him.  Departures? Perhaps not, perhaps better to call them ‘detours along the way.’

I was confused and hurt…  fearful, I suppose, that I wasn’t enough, that without magic… Even then I think I knew, even if I didn’t want to accept it, that I would always… share him with his power, although _then_ he had a reason for it… and a good one.

I returned to the house, sat… waiting. Wanting him to come in. Hoping... but night crawled on, and despite how cold I was, sitting there still in my nightdress, I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I watched the light creep over the edges of the dark and chase it away and cried because I believed that I wasn’t good enough to do that, to _be_ that dawn for Rumple. I dried my tears and hardened myself to it… and still… waited, until with daybreak he returned to the house, and – I thought – proved me right by being reticent and evasive with the answers I craved.

“Hey,” he said as he saw me there.

“Hey,” I answered, standing and coming to the kitchen. “What are you doing?”

“I was, uh…” he knew what I was asking, but hedged, and pointed as he said, “gonna make you breakfast.”

“No,” I said, my irritation clear, “in the basement.”

He opened the refrigerator, his back to me, ignoring the question.

“I saw you practicing magic.”

He closed the refrigerator then, bringing the orange juice with him as he said, still trying to divert my question, “Let’s have breakfast.”

“No. We need to talk about this,” I said. It would have been so easy to let it go, to slip it under the rug and give in to my desire for everything to be all right, to slip into willful ignorance and let it cling to me the way my silken clothing clung to me then – strange things that you notice in times of high emotion – but I couldn’t let myself do that.

He set the juice on the counter, gesturing with his open hand as if to brush away the thought of the magic as though it were nothing.

“It was just a couple of spells,” he said. “Nothing to be concerned about.”

“Okay, then be honest with me,” I demanded. “Why did you bring magic here?”

“I’ve told you. Magic is power.”

“Why do you need it?” I implored; Implored him to see the truth of my emotion then, that _I_ wanted to be what he needed… all he needed. Enough.

Of course, I didn’t understand then that what he needed of magic was to find his son. I was too wrapped up in my own selfishness, and it was selfish, make no mistake about that. In a lot of ways, I was entirely selfish where Rumple was concerned, expecting him to change, to be anything other than himself; the one I had fallen in love with in the first place.  It all seems absurd in retrospect, that expectation, when – especially if I’m honest with myself – I love him for his darkness as much as I love him for the light that is at the heart of him.

“Tell me.” I sighed and shook my head and he… he stayed silent. “You don’t need power, Rumple, you need courage; to let me in.”

He still stayed silent, and so, lost, feeling deserted, even though _I_ was the one leaving, I backed away, and then left the room to head upstairs, not quite sure then what I was going to do. I was too caught up in feeling hurt to see things from anyone’s point of view but my own.

What I did was to get dressed and to leave, to climb out of the window so that he wouldn’t know that I was gone – to steal away like a thief in the night without even _trying_ to understand what was going on in Rumple’s heart, his life – that I had thrust myself into, quite willingly right from the start, always willing. I didn’t _have_ to go and find him when Jefferson had let me out of Regina’s prison that had been my life – well, existence in any case – for all the time that I could remember.

All I knew was that Rumple had brought me back to life in every way of which I could conceive, and yet, he still put magic before me, and I ran from that, just the way I had before, back in the Enchanted Forest, which had ended with me captured by Regina and locked away.  This time, though, for the longest time, I would be my own jailer, even without a conscious realization of that fact.

I wandered for hours, trying to make sense of everything and fighting myself, because all the time in my heart of hearts I wanted to go back, but foolish pride would not allow it. Without knowing where I was headed, without a clear idea of the future, or even what I would do in the present, I ended up at Granny’s and the discovery of iced tea.

It seems absurd, I’m sure, to anyone who hasn’t lived most of their life in captivity, the kinds of things you don’t get to experience – the ordinary, the mundane – things like iced tea and burgers, the not so mundane: love, the physical connections that somehow, over time, become spiritual and transcendent and creep up unawares until they fill you with the sense of something larger than yourself. A sense of Eternity. I was in denial, empty and hollow – and I filled the empty well of myself with the taste of iced tea… and I met Ruby.

“Are you okay?” she said setting the glass in front of me. “That’s your third iced tea this morning. Wouldn’t want to have to call you a cab.”

So friendly, so understated, so overlooked – Ruby… Red – I haven’t thought about it much until just now, until I’m speaking on it, but I felt a kind of connection to her that I never really explored. Would she have welcomed my friendship – had I tried, I mean? I’ve always had the feeling that most people in Storybrooke either simply tolerated me, used me for the knowledge I could give them when they needed it, or worst of all pitied me.

I never needed anyone’s pity. Never wanted it.  I was happy.

Not then though.  Then I was too busy fighting with myself.  Half of me wanted to go back to Rumple, half of me was too lost and angry to even think about going back, I couldn’t settle on either so I stalled, I stalled until that conversation with Ruby pushed my thoughts in one direction of the two.

“No, I… I’ve never had it iced before,” I said, “It’s delicious.”

“I haven’t seen you in here before,” she said, the smile on her face alive, but mingled with the concerned curiosity on the rest of her face.

“Well, I… uh,” I hesitated. “I’ve been a kept woman, until recently.”

She sat then, the smile fading into accord with the rest of the concern on her face.

“Let me guess,” she said, “Bad break up.”

And that was it. The push, the redirect; the innocent that I was acquiescing to the experience of others – that this was what I _should_ think, and do, despite all my desires otherwise, and the echoing protests of my heart.

“I… think I may be headed there.”

“Do you have a place to stay?” she asked, “Any family here?”

“Um… I’m not sure, I’m still looking.” I swallowed down the panic that rose in me then, pulled down a calm, self-assuredness that I wasn’t certain I felt, over me like a suit of armor that was, or would become, well worn. “But I… I’m on my own for now.”

“I can ask Granny about a room here,” Ruby offered.

“Really?”

She nodded, smiling, and though I smiled in return, a moment of the de-facto decision slipped, for just a moment, before I took everything in my hands again, pushed aside _both_ sides of my inner argument and accepted the steps along the road as they were being presented to me.  I thanked her, a little breathlessly, and then realized we hadn’t really introduced ourselves, and so I waited for her to speak her name before doing the same.

Those awkward silences come when you reach a crossroads, I’ve found, and one of them descended as I realized, standing at _that_ crossroad, that… released from Regina’s prisons, yes both of them, and without the new found love I had with Rumple, I have… well… little to nothing of my own.

“What I really need though is… is a life… a job.”

“Well, uh, what do like to do?”

It was a though she had been… given to me in that moment as my guide; one who gave me the nudge to a decision, and then to a way forward, and the thoughts that swirled in my head at her simple question sent me away, away into the past, into the times when I was the happiest, at home with my mother before her death, and then with Rumplestiltskin, at the Dark Castle in the—

“I… I do love books.”

“The library,” Ruby said with a growing smile. “It’s been closed forever, but things are changing now.  Maybe they need a librarian.”

Librarian… scholar… bookworm.

I’ve been called all of these through the years, and through the years I’ve accepted and rejected all of them, each in their turn, and according to my whims, but even at my most vehement rejection of that sedentary kind of life, when all I wanted was adventure, it was to books that I turned, carried with me, consulted. My love of books has saved my life on more occasions than I can count. That day however… On that day, my love of books led me into danger – a danger all in the name of a very _selfish_ kind of love.

Time for a confession… of sorts…

I’ve always had an ambivalent kind of relationship with my father. I obeyed him out of a daughter’s duty when I was younger, but always believed he could have done more than he did to keep our people safe. I don’t resent the decision I made to help save the people in his place – and I’d make the same choices over again in a heartbeat. I meant what I said that no one decides my fate but me – but when we met again, when again he proved that he had no respect for that decision. It damaged our relationship still further.  It makes me wonder why I would believe that his later apparent capitulation to acceptance of Rumple in my life was genuine, and why in the name of everything holy would I _ever_ think that his love for me could be true enough to undo the curse under which I would place myself. I must have been insane, at the very least not in my right mind.

But I digress, and that is a tale for another time.

After finishing my tea, I went to the library to look it over, to see if I thought that perhaps Ruby’s suggestion might turn out to be a good idea, or something that might come to pass. The familiar bubbling excitement rose in me as I peered in through the boarded-up windows, making me oblivious to all but the sight of the books before my eyes.

That’s how he came to startle me so badly in the first instance, and probably why my already too trusting nature – too naïve perhaps, some might say – did not lead me to instant alarm when Smee began to ask questions of me, of money, of friends, before suddenly snatching me away, and dragging me off for the reunion with my father, which, as I’ve said was nothing but damaging to the father-daughter bond that _should_ have been between us.

“Who put you up to this?” I asked Smee as he sat me down in the chair, and behind him the door already began to open, and I heard my father’s voice calling my name.  At first relief flooded through me, and I rose and embraced him.

 “Oh, I’ve missed you, Belle,” he spoke into my hair, “I’m so sorry this is how we had to be reunited. Please understand. I had no choice.”

“But to kidnap me?”

We’d drawn to arm’s length, holding hands, and I listened, I did try to understand his point of view, but then…

“After the curse broke I searched all over for you and discovered the Dark One still had you captive.”

“He wasn’t holding me captive.” I told my father, my expression softening as my love for Rumple warmed me, creeping in again in place of the anger I was still feeling for him. “I chose to be with him.”

“Are you saying you fell in love with him?” The question was phrased placidly enough – for my father in any case, his expression neutral, but when he learned from me of my fear that it was over, and he told me it must be, his expression became one of relief, and then disgust as he bade me.

“Promise me that you no longer love him. That you will never see him again.”

It’s odd to me now, looking back on those moments of the reunion, that no matter how afraid I was, then angry, I was still glad to see him, but then angrier yet when the words came that proved his antipathy toward Rumple still… and my final rejection. I don’t think I’ve ever built a wall quicker in my life and I pushed my father away, backed away still further, denial spilling from my lips as my anger, hurt and incredulity mingled to a singular point within me.

“I’m not a child!”

“You don’t understand what that man will do to you; what he’s already done.” Father growled.

“No. _You_ don’t understand.” I answered, “It’s _my_ life!”

That was the point, I think, my father realized that I was serious, and naturally he didn’t like it because he _didn’t_ understand.

Everyone looks at Rumple and sees only the darkness, the Dark One, the _Beast,_ and assumes some kind of magical spell compels my love for him, but… if they understood magic at all they’d understand that it doesn’t work that way – it _can’t_ …. and no one understands that Rumple’s darkness is not as it seems.  They don’t _know_ his life, what it was, what it’s been. They don’t _understand_ what he’s been through and ironically, I suppose, here was my father about to do something wrong in an effort to – as he saw it – save me, protect me.  Yet, how was _his_ action any better than Rumple’s own act as he tried to protect _his_ son? The hypocrisy of it all drives me wild with frustration at the best of times.

And a hypocrite he was, my father, and telling me he had no choice, told Smee to do it… and even without knowing what he was about, what _it_ was, I felt the cold needle prick the base of my spine and fill me with a chill, not for fear of myself and what was about to happen to me – though that _was_ there as I was dragged away, fearing the unknown, and all that came with it – my fear was of never seeing Rumple again.

No matter how angry I was with him, how betrayed I’d felt that he still felt the need to practice magic, and to be evasive about why, was keeping me shut out, I knew my anger would pass and the love I hold for him would bring me back to his side. That knowledge has been proven right over and over again since that time so early in our relationship. I shouldn’t have left. I wanted to return to the warmth and security of that love as Smee dragged me away.

I’ve never been one to beg and plead, not in the way I did then, and I hate myself for doing it, as he bundled me into the back of my father’s florist’s van to take me to the mine, where he’d enact my father’s plan for _making_ me obey his will. Another horrible irony because, to do so, _he_ would be the one using magic to get his own way as I found out when I desperately asked Smee what he was doing as he handcuffed me into the minecart.

“Sending you on a little ride under the town line.” He said, “Once you cross, you’ll forget who you were in the other realm and who you loved.”

It’s hard to describe the feelings that filled me as he told me this, as I learned the full extent of my father’s hate; that he’d rather me forget everything, including _him_ if it would only keep me from loving Rumplestiltskin. A mix of hot anger and cold despair and the ice of terror at the thought that, without knowing who I was in the Enchanted Forest I’d return to the absent, blank slate I’d been when locked up in the asylum beneath the hospital. I didn’t _have_ an alternate persona here in this land that had for so long been without magic. Now, to have found myself, and to be about to lose myself in the span of moments only, the incredible love and anger I felt for Rumple for being the one who had awakened the magic that had both given and would take away my _self_ … _so_ confusing, all of those feelings at once.

Smee pushed a flashlight into my hand so that I could find the key to the handcuffs in the bottom of the minecart, where he’d said he put it, and then wished me luck as he sent me on my way to oblivion.

“Oh, William! I’m begging you, please don’t… don’t do this, please!” Some part of me was convinced, hoped against hope, that if I could keep speaking, could keep the sound of my own voice in my mind as I crossed that invisible line; that because Regina’s curse hadn’t bestowed me with a personality in Storybrooke, that I’d somehow be the exception to what happened to the other residents if they tried to leave Storybrooke.

I prattled and pleaded and suddenly found the cart jerking to a stop, then traveling almost faster in reverse than it had going forward and lost in my fear, I cried and pleaded more. Then, turning my head this way and that as I went, I saw the others… Ruby and David, but first, Rumple – always Rumple. My father was there too.

“That was seriously… wow!” I heard Ruby’s voice as the handcuffs fell away from my wrists and David lifted me out of the cart and set me on my feet again.

“Belle, are you all right?” Rumple came to me then, his face consumed with concern, and in that moment my heart softened, and might have turned to him again.

“I, uh, I think so.”

“Do you remember who I am?” he asked.

“I do: Rumplestiltskin. I… I remember.”

By that time, I was in his arms, and the warmth of him and the scent of him and the security I felt… well… it should have been enough, but my contrary nature got the better of me, and far from fold myself into his embrace and take him into mine as I wanted to, I pushed a hand between us, palm against his chest to push him away. The action let in the anger again; the disappointment that I wasn’t enough.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, and I saw the pain and confusion in his face.

“Thank you,” I told him, “for what you just did, but that doesn’t change that you’re too cowardly to be honest with me.”

The anger I felt had make blades of my tongue.

“But Belle, I—”

“I tried to tell him that, Belle.” My father interrupted, and rather than derail my anger, it only focused it further as he added, “Come with me, darling.”

“After what you just tried to do to me?” I could hear the incredulity in my own voice and snapped, “You’re no better, father. You don’t get to decide what I do, or how I feel. I do.”

Then turning on them both, Rumple and my father, I finished, “If either of you cared about me, you would’ve listened. I don’t want to see either of you again – ever!”

But it wasn’t true.  Even as the words came from my mouth, the desolation I felt at the thought of living the rest of my days without seeing Rumple chased away the anger, so before I could let that show on my face or in my eyes, I turned away, left the mine with Ruby, fighting not to look back. I could _feel_ Rumple’s eyes on my back and if I had…

The next day, after Ruby gave me the key at breakfast, I felt a familiar wonder and excitement, an enlivening joy filling the whole of me as I let myself into the library. I turned around, taking everything in – the circulation desk, self upon self of books that I couldn’t wait to dust off, investigate, match to the catalogue and—

“We may sit in our library, and yet be in all quarters of the earth.”

Rumple’s voice came from between the shelves and I leaned forward, unable to stop the smile from teasing at the corners of my lips. I should have known he would have something to do with this.

“You gave me the key?” It wasn’t really a question and I let the key dangle between my fingers.

“I heard of your interest and I uh,” he began, a quirky little expression on his face to match the soft warmth that was hinted in the sparkle of his eyes. “I made some enquiries. There’s an apartment for the caretaker if you want it.”

“If… if this is some way to win me back,” I accused softly, “after everything you—”

Even as I spoke the words, I couldn’t help the flood of memory, or warmth and excitement and love that settled over me as we stood there, he and I, amid the racks; remembering a different library, a different time…

_The doors to which he led me opened slowly, and the light was equally slow to fall upon the many, many thousands of books that lined the walls. I drew a sharp breath, taking in the glorious scent of dusty leather and dry paper and ink… books, more books than I could ever read in my lifetime._

_“Temper your excitement, Dearie, this is merely another room for you to clean.”_

“That’s… that’s… that’s not why I’m here,” Rumple stuttered then, breaking the memory, but oh, how could I not love this man, who had and would in all our years to come, give me all of himself, and the world. “I came because… you’re right… about me. I _am_ a coward. I have been my entire life.”

I watched him then, watched him deeply, with my heart – a heart that always heard him, even in the darkest of our moments when I did not _want_ to hear. That was usually when I heard him the clearest, the truth of him – his light that was smothered by the darkness he carried.

“I tried to make up for it by collecting power, and the power became so important that I couldn’t let go.” He faltered then, and it took everything that I was not to step forward, to make some kind of contact with him then.  I couldn’t do that. Not then.  I couldn’t. “Even when… that meant losing the most important person in my life.”

“Your son,” I said, everything becoming clear… everything, from the moment I had first asked him about his son… through his rejection of my breaking of the dark curse that lay upon him… right up until the moment he brought magic to Storybrooke – all of it – everything. I understood.  In that moment I think I might have understood him better than I have ever understood anyone, ever.

“Baelfire is his name,” he said, confirming my thoughts. “After he left, I dedicated myself to finding him. I went down many, many paths until I found a curse that could take me to the land where he’d escaped.”

“Here,” I said, meaning, ‘ _Rumple, I understand, I forgive you.’_ And I did, in that moment, forgive him, and do not to this day understand what, besides fear, held me back from doing as I always would, as I always _should_ , in being the one that was there for him when all else turned again him.

“And I found myself in this little town with only one thing left to do,” he said, continuing his tale. “Wait for the curse to be broken so that I could leave and find him.”

“But instead of looking for him you—you brought magic,” I reminded him, and he nodded.

“Because I’m still a coward,” he admitted. “Magic has become a crutch that I can’t walk without. And even if I could, I know now, I can never leave this place.”

“Because anyone who leaves forgets the people they love. So, when you go to look for Baelfire, you won’t know him.” My heart ached for the cruelty in it all.

“Magic comes with a price,” he said. “Belle, I have to break this new curse. That’s why I was using magic that night you saw me, down in the basement. I have lost so much that I loved. I didn’t want to lose you without you knowing everything.” He took a breath in the pause that followed and said, “Goodbye, Belle.”

I was frozen, in time, in place, I could barely think except to know that he was turning to walk away; that he believed he had lost me, and… why wouldn’t he? I’d told him I didn’t ever want to see him again. I had to stop this before it went too far.  I had to let him know that this path he walked was not alone, not without me… not without forgiveness.

“Do you,” I started, then, “um… have you ever had a hamburger?”

He stopped walking then but didn’t turn back.

“Yes, of course.”

“Well I haven’t.” I wasn’t sure if this was the way things were done in this place, and time, but I couldn’t let him leave without first… accepting his olive branch and offering one of my own. “But I hear that Granny’s makes a great one. Maybe… maybe we could… try it some time.”

“I would like that,” he said, and even though all I could see was the back of his head, I felt his answering smile mirror my own as we – albeit narrowly – traversed the first of our many shared bumps in the road since leaving the Enchanted Forest.


End file.
